At 5 pm, the reruns would come on. I knew that the episodes weren’t new. After all, TV40 wasn’t a channel you turned to for the latest in TV programming. But the sounds, the sights, the characters — – for me, it was the first time around.
Like clockwork, my dad would get home from work around 5:15 pm. The evening’s episode of Star Trek would already be underway, but he managed to get caught up. He would sit down in his living room chair, and we would watch Star Trek together. Captain Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scottie, Uhura. Romulans, Klingons, Vulcans, and tribbles.
Looking back, the whole thing blended together: The original episodes, the Next Generation, the paperback novels, even discussions about Star Trek on early Internet bulletin boards that I would dial into with my 2400 baud modem. I’ll even confess to bringing a Star Trek: The Next Generation poster with me to my freshman year dorms.
But of course, reality eventually catches up to you. The spin-off series — Deep Space 9, Voyager, Enterprise — all forced me to own up to the fact that a galaxy with other life forms probably wouldn’t ensure that they all walked on two legs and communicated with lips, tongues, and vocal cords. And as I grew more cynical about the ways real nations interacted, I grew more cynical about the idea that we would someday find ourselves in an interplanetary Federation (of good).
So I drifted away. I don’t think I even saw the last two movies in the franchise.
It was with some trepidation that I bought tickets to the latest Star Trek movie. The reviews were good, the critics happy. But I wasn’t sure what I was getting into. New faces for old characters? How would my childhood imagination react?
Apparently, with love, sadness, and nostalgia. I’d never admit on a first date that Star Trek was such a big part of my childhood. But it was. And I’ll never admit on a first date that the latest Star Trek movie was emotionally moving.
But it was. Even though they managed to create an alternate history to the one I already loved.
